October 18, 2001	Thursday	Rajab 30, 1422

LONDON: The crucial importance of forging an agreement on the broad outlines of a post-Taliban interim government has come into sharp focus with the visit to Islamabad of the US secretary of state, Colin Powell.

The war in Afghanistan is now entering a potentially definitive four-week period delimited, militarily and politically, by the advance of winter and the beginning of Ramazan on November 17. If the allies fail to achieve a decisive breakthrough by then — meaning the collapse of Mullah Omar Mohammad’s regime or the capture of Osama bin Laden — they face a protracted war of attrition in deteriorating conditions, an increasingly uncontrollable internal conflict and a falling away of Muslim government support, especially in the Middle East.

The creation of a viable, broad-based alternative to the Taliban and of a UN-led framework for the country’s graduadual rehabilitation would head off this daunting prospect. It could help bring the military campaign to the early conclusion urged by Pakistan’s ruler, President Musharraf.

It would provide the rallying point that the disparate Afghan factions (and Taliban would-be defectors) currently lack. It would reassure Muslim opinion that Afghans, not western outsiders, will be the arbiters of an Afghan settlement.

And most important in military terms, an agreement that was binding on the non-Pashtun Northern Alliance opposition would finally allow the US air force to attack the large Taliban troop concentrations north of Kabul without fear of precipitating a new inter-ethnic bloodbath.

In addition to a swift end to a conflict that threatens his own position, Pakistan’s leader wants a big say in any future government — and minimal influence for his Northern Alliance foes. But he also badly needs the dollars, the weapons and the refurbished strategic alliance that Powell is offering.

While agreeing that Taliban “elements” could form part of the next government, he stressed there would be no bombing pause at present. He also repeated his call for the widest possible post-Taliban coalition.

Despite Pakistan’s manoeuvring and many ancient rivalries, the common ground upon which all the interested parties could in theory be assembled can now be glimpsed. But the principal question still goes begging: how to turn these tentative beginnings to a collectively agreed end? The answer lies with the UN. That role includes aid, peacekeeping and reconstruction. —Dawn/The Guardian News Service.